On Tue, 20 May 2008 23:16:53 -0500, Rajko M. wrote:
Thanks, Anders. What about the idea of somehow flagging KDE4 as beta? Basil does bring up a good point, I think.
The point is good, but skips GNOME that is on position one.
True, but I can't see that it would hurt to label the KDE4 item "Preview", "Beta", or in some other way. I'm trying to think like a new user to Linux here (not an easy task since I've been using Linux since RedHat 5.2 - and that's probably "new" compared to many others here).
I'm pretty sure if I would have to choose from few listed options that I have no idea what they are, I would would assume that listed items are sorted in that way for some reason and that would be that software vendor will put first items that will present them in the best way, and then down the list choices that are not so good.
I think it would be fairly obvious that the sort order is alphabetic and not based on anything other than that. I don't know that a new user would see it as anything but an alphabetically sorted list.
Those that will skip GNOME already have preference and know what is the difference between KDE3 and 4.
I don't know that that's a safe assumption unless the new user has been in a complete Linux vacuum and heard nothing at all about Linux before trying it. They may have heard friends talk about GNOME vs. KDE - or they may have read news articles about Linus' highly-publicized comments about his preference for KDE. Those comments, as quoted, didn't reference a version AFAICR, so we do get back to the rather valid point that 4>3, so 4 must be better than 3. It may well be, but it seems only fair to point out to those new users that 4 isn't complete yet.
BTW, this means that fair approach would be to rotate desktops in the list on each new openSUSE version. Current alphabetic gives advantage to GNOME and it is far from fair.
Well, that's getting pretty nit-picky IMHO. This isn't really about what's fair in the listing, but rather in representing the KDE4 release appropriately so people's first impression of Linux is a good one. Nothing against KDE4, but as development hasn't reached a release milestone and some people do have issues with it, I don't think anyone wants new users to get a bad impression of Linux because they chose a desktop environment that may not be at a release state - and as such may have some problems that need to be fixed. New users should have it explained to them that they certainly can choose to use 4, but that because 4 is currently undergoing massive development, they may want to use 3 if they're looking for something solid.
Also, the KDE4 development resembles on express train. The status is changing so fast that while we will be half way chewing question is it ready or not, they will make it ready.
But relative to the release of 11.0 final, AFAIK the developers of KDE4 are saying it won't be finished by that time. Not specifically that they're saying "KDE4 won't be ready for openSUSE 11.0 release", but rather the release timeframe for 11 is before the release timeframe of KDE4, is it not? Jim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org